WHEN THESE GUYS TALK, SCREENWRITERS LISTEN:
The Two Whiz Kids Behind Final Draft, Inc.

Los Angeles, December 12, 1998

Anybody who's anybody in Hollywood knows Ben Cahan and Marc Madnick -- or, at least, their products. As Chairman and President CEO, respectively, of a software company named Final Draft, Inc. (formerly B.C Software, Inc.), the pair heads an enterprise that has carved an unusual niche by catering to the special film industry related computer software needs of writers and production crews. Their flagship product is Final Draft, the number-one screenwriting program in the world. With over 100,000 units sold since it was introduced seven years ago, Final Draft has become the standard for writing film scripts, T.V. epsiodes and stageplays. Many of the biggest names in Hollywood are Final Draft users: Sydney Pollack, Tom Hanks, Oliver Stone, Robert Altman, Lawrence Kasdan, Steven Bochco, and Terry Gilliam, to name a few.

FADE IN: COMPUTER PROGRAMMER MEETS THE MUSE When Ben Cahan received his B.S. in computer science from the University of Maryland in 1984, Hollywood was as far from his mind as it was from his college apartment. He had worked three days a week doing computer programming at IBM to help pay his tuition, and when he graduated, he took a programming job in California with Logicon, Inc., a major defense contractor. Then, on a lark, he took a movie production class at the University of Southern California. It was 1985. The Macintosh was one year old. Cahan was 21. Inspired by his class, Cahan quit his job and developed the Production Scheduler and Production Budgeter, two production management programs that were the only products of their kind when they were released in 1987. With the money he made from those two programs, Cahan then went to work on Final Draft, a screenwriting tool that meets industry formats. Introduced in 1991 for the Macintosh only, Final Draft quickly became the standard, putting other Macintosh programs out of business and earning kudos from reviewers everywhere. Loaded with all of the most important and desirable features, Final Draft eliminates the headaches usually associated with writing a script. Until Final Draft, writers endured an arduous process of writing with a word processor and then using a second program to format their script, with each minor change came a reformat, and any writer will tell you that changes are far from infrequent. Final Draft combines powerful word processing with professional script formatting in one self-contained, easy-to-use package -- all of the formatting is done automatically and transparently -- you just write your script. Final Draft, now also available for Windows, is automated beyond simple pagination. There are a host of features designed to let writers focus on writing. A great example is SmartType, which makes repetitive entering of Character Names, Slug Lines and Transitions a thing of the past by entering just enough letters to match the desired item and Final Draft types in the rest. Also included is easy Tab and Enter key commands for transitions from one text format to another (for example, you depress "Enter" and dialogue follows a character name), adjustable spacing and margins to help make a script look a little longer or shorter, and much more.

CUT TO: MARC MADNICK Meanwhile, Marc Madnick had come to Hollywood and was working behind the scenes on various films. He started as a guardian to young actor Corey Haim, then moved on to production accounting jobs, most notably on Back to the Future II and III. Madnick and Cahan had mutual friends at the University of Maryland, where Madnick earned a B.S. degree in Finance. They hooked up in 1990 and started to write a screenplay together on an early version of Final Draft. Madnick fell in love with the program and convinced Cahan to bring him on board as vice president of sales and marketing. Up to that point, Cahan had run the company as a one-man show. "It started with a grassroots campaign," Madnick says of his early efforts to market Final Draft. "At first I gave personal demonstrations and probably sold every one individually. Then word of mouth started working, retail outlets and mail-order catalogs picked it up, and it caught on."

About Final Draft, Inc.

Final Draft, Inc. (formerly B.C. Software) was founded in 1992 by writer Marc Madnick and software engineer Benjamin Cahan, who recognized the need for a screenwriting software package, which would eventually re-create and revolutionize the way an entire industry writes and revises its scripts. Final Draft has become the best selling screenwriting program worldwide, with more than 100,000 units sold since its introduction. Final Draft was named one of the fifty fastest growing technology companies in 1998 in Los Angeles by Deloitte & Touche. With a name change from B.C. Software, Inc. to Final Draft, Inc. and a move from their West Los Angeles facilities to a bigger facility in the Los Angeles, Encino area, Final Draft, Inc. counts 22 employees and is currently expanding into the global software market.

Final Draft, Inc. (formerly B.C. Software, Inc.) 16000 Ventura Blvd. Suite 800 Encino, California 91436 (800) 231-4055 (818) 995-4422 Fax info@finaldraft.com www.finaldraft.com